Vale: Bluejuice

Whilst some Aussie bands are resurrecting their careers this year – including The Superjesus and Kisschasy – one is saying farewell… except not to North Queensland.

Sydney band Bluejuice have just wrapped up their national farewell tour in style in their home town. The band was scheduled to return to North Queensland next week, with shows originally booked in Mackay, Townsville and Cairns, however the band’s management pulled the plug on the NQ leg due to poor ticket sales.

The band’s manager Todd Wagstaff addressed the cancellation in a statement posted on their social media page earlier tonight:

it seems like there are some mixed messages re: the Nth Queensland shows, so let me set the record straight. Its with regret we had to cancel our dates in North Queensland. The fact is that Bluejuice “sold out” their national tour but for some reason we only sold a few dozen tickets to all the shows in Nth Queensland. Due to geography and circumstance North Queensland is amongst …the most expensive part of Australia to tour for a mid sized band because you need to travel with a large PA and extra crew which costs an additional $5k per night. So for Bluejuice the costs are $10k per night to cover travel, production crew and stage wages and commissions. As the long term manager of Bluejuice I was not going to have the guys go into Nth Queensland and lose tens of thousands of dollars. The band have slogged it out on the road for 13 years playing incredible shows. To honour the the rest of the nation came out and snapped up the tickets. I reasonably didn’t want the band to loose that advantage going into Nth Queensland without some guarantees. We spoke to the venues about the predicament and we spent some extra on marketing and pushed out the message further but we still sold no extra tickets. Bluejuice played the best shows of their career in Sydney last week to wrap things up in their hometown. It would have been a massive anticlimax to go and loose ten of thousands of dollars playing poorly attended shows in Nth Queensland. The guys have had some great shows in Nth Queensland and we listened to all the noise people made on social media, but nobody followed through with ticket purchases. For the people who did buy ticket you get a full refund and our absolute apology. For you it sucks but we hope in particular you appreciate the predicament and remember the good times. Thanks, Todd (

We here at Girl HQ sincerely hope the live music fans of North Queensland learnt the lesson here – ticket presales talk. Many are blaming lack of promotion of the event for the lacklustre sales – one of many with unexpectedly low numbers in recent months. Is it a case of poor promotion, or the laid-back NQ lifestyle and lack of forward-planning?